The Glass Menagerie Post #2: Maybe it's not all Amanda's fault

             Scenes 5-7 of The Glass Menagerie emphasize the ways in which Amanda's treatment of Laura has the potential to actually benefit her. Although Amanda focuses all of her energy on convincing herself that Laura is beautiful and perfect like she wants her to be, her efforts to ensure that a gentleman caller visits Laura ultimately force Laura to reach a level of understanding and contentment that she otherwise would not have known.  Without Amanda's constant nagging and returning her to reality, Laura would completely lose sight of her identity.  Laura would escape into her own world, and never confront her problems.  It is because Amanda never gives up and never loses hope in the idea that Laura could potentially marry that Laura is able to connect with Jim on an emotional level and face her biggest fears.  In other words, Amanda's persistant and controlling tendencies are both the source of and the solution to her fears.

            Amanda's worst trait with regards to parenting remains that she brags about herself and how she acted at Laura's age, and creates a model of behavior that Laura could never achieve.  However, she still shows sympathy and a desire to help Laura in the form of patience and persistence in her efforts to find Laura a caller.  Amanda begs Tom to help find Laura a male caller, and even though she partially is acting on her own selfish motives to leave Laura, she still is working towards a better future for Laura to help mend the wounds that she herself has created.  During Laura's encounter with Jim, there are many specific instances in which Laura tries to leave Jim, but Amanda forces her to return to him.  Right as Jim arrives, Amanda asks Laura to open the door and Laura blatantly refuses.  Laura begs for Amanda to act for her and relieve her of her fears.  Rather than giving in, Amanda refuses and orders Laura, "Laura Wingfield, you march right to that door!"(57).  In this way, Amanda forces Laura to confront her fears rather than run from them, even after enabling Laura to escape reality for so much of her life.  As the night goes on, Laura repeatedly avoids Jim by moving to a different room and calling herself ill.  When Jim offers to help Amanda, Amanda asks Jim to visit with Laura in the other room.  She suggests to Jim, "And how about coaxing sister to drink a little wine?  I think it would be good for her!"(10) in order to help Laura gain the confidence to speak with and compose herself next to Jim.  When Jim obeys Amanda's requests and privately speaks with Laura in the candlelight, he is able to provide Laura with advice regarding what she should do in order to be less shy and insecure.  In my opinion, this helps Laura and benefits her because she is not only forced to practice socializing with another man, but the man she socializes with brings her constructive criticism that she can apply in the future.  Jim also comforts Laura by telling her, "...every has problems, not just you, but practically everybody has got some problems....look around you and you will see lots of people as disappointed as you are"(76).  Therefore, Amanda's persistant efforts to bring Jim closer to Laura allow Laura to gain knowledge, happiness, and contentment.  Consequently, Laura benefits from Amanda's actions.

           I personally can relate to the idea that sometimes it takes other people to rope you into doing things that you don't want to do in order to be happy.  I think there are a lot of risks that people wouldn't take on their own.  Often friendships are formed when one person introduces another person to someone they would not normally talk to, and the friendships formed during these times are stronger than expected and probably otherwise would not have been formed. Altogether, I think that in daily life, it's really important to have someone there to influence your actions because you would miss out on a lot of things if you only ever did what was comfortable for you.